Contributors to Volume III
Robert R. Agne, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Auburn University, United States. His research is in the area of language and social interaction with special interests in conversational difficulties and interactant identity. Recent studies have examined topics such as sports talk in radio call-in programs, parasocial interaction in TV character blogs, self-assessment in group interaction, and crisis negotiation in the FBI-Branch Davidian standoff of 1993.
Guillermo Avila-Saavedra, PhD, is Assistant Professor in Communications at Salem State University, United States. His research interests include the relationship between media and identity, Latino media in the United States, and international and inter-cultural communication. His work has appeared in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Media, Culture and Society, Communication Quarterly, and Mass Communication and Society.
Eli Avraham, PhD, is the head of the public relations program in the Department of Communication, University of Haifa, Israel. He has published numerous articles in professional journals and is the author and co-author of eight award-winning books and monographs, among them: Behind Media Marginality: Coverage of Social Groups and Places in the Israeli Press (2003).
Mary C. Beltrán, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin, United States. Her research is focused on the production of race, gender, and class in US film, television, and celebrity culture and particularly on Latina/o and mixed-race representation. She is the author of Latina/o Stars in US Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom and co-editor (with Camilla Fojas) of the anthology Mixed Race Hollywood.
Daniel Biltereyst, PhD, is Professor in Film and Cultural Studies at the Department of Communication Studies, Ghent University, Belgium, where he leads the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies. His work is on film and screen culture as sites of international debate, censorship, and controversy, situated within public sphere theories.
Miranda J. Brady, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University, Canada. Her work takes a critical/cultural approach and explores the construction of identity in the media and other highly mediated cultural institutions like museums. In particular, her focus is on race and ethnicity with an emphasis on the construction of Indigenous identity.
Diem-My T. Bui, PhD, is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago, United States. Her research and teaching interests include transnational feminist media studies, critical cultural studies, ethnic studies, and popular culture.
Mia Consalvo, PhD, is Canada Research Chair in Game Studies and Design at Concordia University, Montreal. She is author of the book Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames and co-editor of the Handbook of Internet Studies.
Frederik Dhaenens is a doctoral student and a member of the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies at the Department of Communication Studies (CIMS), Ghent University, Belgium. His research focuses on queer theory, queer representation, and screen culture.
Paloma Diaz Soloaga, PhD, is Professor of Advertising in the Communication Department at Complutense University of Madrid and head of the Degree in Communication and Management of Fashion at Villanueva University (UCM), Spain. She is the author of How to Manage Fashion Brands published in collaboration with Interbrand (2007), and is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Fashion Marketing and Management and Communication Theory.
Jenny Gunnarsson Payne, PhD, currently works as a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Gender, Culture, and History at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden. She has previously published mainly in the area of feminist movement media, such as zines, blogs, film, and television. Her current research concerns egg and embryo donation in the context of cross-border reproductive care between Sweden and the Baltic States.
Marie Hardin, PhD, is Associate Professor of Journalism at the Pennsylvania State University, United States, and Associate Director of the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism. Her research focuses on issues in media sport, including those around diversity, ethics, and professional practice. Her research has been published in a variety of journals and books.
Susan Harewood, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell, United States. Her research focuses on communication, popular music, performance, race, and gender in the Englishspeaking Caribbean. Her work appears in a number of academic journals and edited collections and examines media and popular culture as sites at which the pursuit of justice is contested, constrained, and shaped.
Heather L. Hundley, PhD, is Assistant Dean at the Palm Desert Campus of California State University, San Bernardino, United States, and is Professor in the Department of Communication at CSUSB. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses primarily in media and qualitative methods. Her research interests include gender, sport, popular culture, and issues of social justice.
Nancy A. Jennings, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Cincinnati, United States. Her research focuses on children's cognitive and social development and their use of media through experimental study and evaluation of media content and media literacy promotion programs. She has served on local and national taskforces for screen-time reduction, and provides parent education programs on children's media use.
Tanya Krzywinska, PhD, is a Professor of Screen Studies at Brunel University, UK. She convenes a Master's and PhD program in Digital Games where theory and design are brought together. She has published extensively on videogames, focusing in particular on the relationship of cinema and videogames. Her most recent publication is as editor of and contributor to a collection of essays entitled Ringbearers: The Lord of the Rings Online devoted to the academic study of a Multiplayer Online game version of The Lord of the Rings.
Kenneth A. Lachlan, PhD, is Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, United States. His research interests include new media technology, interactivity and presence, and emergency and risk communication.
Katalin Lustyik, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the Roy H. Park School of Communication, Ithaca College, United States, and was a Regional Visiting Fellow at Cornell University. Her research and teaching interests include children's media, television studies, media globalization, and international communication. Her publications on children's television in Eastern Europe and New Zealand, global youth culture, prime-time animation, and transnational children's media have appeared in book collections and academic journals.
Gina Marchetti, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature, School of Humanities, at the University of Hong Kong. Her books include Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (1993), Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's “Infernal Affairs” – The Trilogy (2007), and From Tian'anmen to Times Square: Transnational China and the Chinese Diaspora on Global Screens (2006), as well as several co-edited volumes – most recently, Hong Kong Screenscapes: From the New Wave to the Digital Frontier, co-edited with Esther M. K. Cheung and Tan See-Kam (2011).
Sharon R. Mazzarella, PhD, is Professor and Director of the School of Communication Studies at James Madison University, United States. She is editor or co-editor of five academic books including the recently published Girl Wide Web 2.0: Revisiting Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity (2010). Her published articles in the area of youth and girls' studies appear in a range of academic journals.
Matthew P. McAllister, PhD, is Professor of Communications in the Department of Film/Video and Media Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, United States. His research interests include advertising criticism, popular culture, and the political economy of the media. He is the author of The Commercialization of American Culture (1996), and co-editor of The Advertising and Consumer Culture Reader (2009, with Joseph Turow) and The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture (forthcoming, with Emily West).
Sharon Meraz, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois, Chicago, United States. Her research interests span the impact of emerging new technologies on politics and media theory.
Sujata Moorti, PhD, is Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Middlebury College, United States. She has published extensively on media representations of gender, sexuality, and diasporic formations. She is the author of Color of Rape: Gender, Race and Democratic Public Spheres (2002), and has co-edited Global Bollywood: The Travels of Hindi Song and Dance (2008) and Local Violence, Global Media: Feminist Analyses of Gendered Representations.
Carlos Muñiz, PhD, is Professor at Universidad Autónoma of Nuevo León, Mexico. His research is focused on media effects and in the study of minorities' representation on media. He is author of more than 30 articles and of the book Communication, Politics and Citizenship: Current Contributions to the Political Communication Study. At the moment he runs a research project about media stereotypes and their influence on the perception of indigenous in Mexico.
Zizi Papacharissi, PhD, is Professor and Head of the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois-Chicago, United States. Her research interests include social and political uses of newer media.
James D. Robinson, PhD, is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication at the University of Dayton, United States. He has published several articles on media portrayals including media portrayals of health, gender, the elderly, religion, and family configurations. He also works with the MyCareTeam research group at Georgetown University on the impact of online diabetes management technology on the health of Native Americans diagnosed with diabetes.
Nancy Signorielli, PhD, is Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in the Department of Communication at the University of Delaware, United States. Grounded in cultivation theory, her research seeks to examine how the media present images of gender roles, aging, drugs, alcohol and drinking, health, sex, and violence, as well as how these images impact audiences.
Alexandra Nutter Smith is a PhD candidate in the College of Communications at Pennsylvania State University, United States, where she is also affiliated with the Women's Studies Department. In addition to hypercommercialization, her major area of interest is critical environmental communication.
Jocelyn Steinke, PhD, is Professor in the School of Communication and Program in Gender and Women's Studies at Western Michigan University, United States. Her research focuses on images of science and scientists in the mass media. Her most recent research explores the influence of media images of female scientists and engineers on adolescent girls' conceptions of gender roles and their occupational aspirations.
Teresa L. Thompson, PhD, is Professor of Communication at the University of Dayton, United States. She edits the international journal Health Communication and co-edited the first and second editions of the Handbook of Health Communication. She has published over 70 articles and seven books on various aspects of health communication.
Yan Tian, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, United States. His research interests are in the areas of health communication, Internet-related communication, and research methods. His work has been published in such journals as Health Communication and Patient Education and Counseling.
Jeanine Warisse Turner, PhD, is Associate Professor of Communication in the Communication, Culture, and Technology Program at Georgetown University, United States. Her research focuses on how new media and new technologies impact the health care of individuals. In addition, she has spent years examining how organizations use new technologies to benefit patients and medical organizations. She also works with the Imaging Science and Information Systems Center in the School of Medicine at Georgetown University.
Sofie Van Bauwel, PhD, is Professor at the Department of Communication Studies at Ghent University, Belgium, and is part of the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies at the Department of Communication Studies (CIMS). Her main field of interest is gender, media, and film and television. She is involved in several projects with a focus on the media as signifying articulations in visual popular culture and publishes internationally and nationally on popular media culture, feminist theory, and film.
Mary Douglas Vavrus, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Communication Studies Department, University of Minnesota, United States. She is the author of Postfeminist News: Political Women in Media Culture (2002) and numerous journal articles. She is currently writing a book about gender, media, and militarism.
Erin Whiteside, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee, United States. Her research, grounded in a feminist approach to examine sports media practices and texts, has been published in Communication Culture and Critique, Journal of Sports Media, International Journal of Sport Communication, and Sociology of Sport Journal among others.
Ruth Zanker, PhD, is Research Leader and Lecturer at the New Zealand Broadcasting School at Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology in New Zealand. She researches the political economy of New Zealand media and implications of digital change for children and young people. Her publications have appeared in book collections and academic journals.